


(I'm Gonna Pop Your) Bubblegum Heart

by ThereAreNoLines



Category: Lost Girl, Pretty Little Liars
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-09
Updated: 2013-04-09
Packaged: 2017-12-08 00:52:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/755076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThereAreNoLines/pseuds/ThereAreNoLines
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You know, I’m a really good judge of character. You don’t strike me as a person that’s nice to strangers that she’s only just met.” She licked her parched lips, pushing her hand through her hair, now hanging in limp specters of her original ringlets. “So why me?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	(I'm Gonna Pop Your) Bubblegum Heart

When they meet, it isn’t serendipity. There’s no flashing red arrows or fireworks going off or ordering the same exact coffee at the same exact time. It’s the furthest thing from serendipity, actually. Standing on a street corner, bruised and scuffed with gravel in her heels and her skirt hiked up around her hips, meeting someone was the furthest thing from her radar. (She had already met someone, and he was lying prone and passed out drunk three feet away from her. Thank God her purse against his skull had been enough to push him over the edge to unconsciousness.)

Tamsin wasn’t sugary sweet, like Hanna expected her to be first laying eyes on her. In the cop shows she watched at three am when she couldn’t sleep, it was always the girl cops that were sensitive and gentle and shit. But no, it was the Chris Martin look alike that gave her a space blanket to wrap around her shoulders, and spoke softly and encouragingly, telling her it wasn’t her fault, and he couldn’t hurt her anymore. It wasn’t until she told him to shove it, that she didn’t need that, that she was fine and she’d survived worse, and he could take his white knight bullshit elsewhere (her exact words) that the blonde cop even talked – well, it was a snicker, but it was enough to make her look up and really take a good look at her. She had underestimated her, she knew, as she looked at her. The leather jacket and the boots and the I-don’t-take-any-shit expression. “You give that bastard the nasty ass lump on his head?”

Hanna nodded, holding up her bag. “Daddy taught me to keep a brick in my purse at all times. Instant blunt force head trauma.” She said, smiling sweetly up at her, swinging her legs over the edge of the ambulance. “Can I go now? My dogs are howling, and I want to head home.”

The blonde and the redhead had exchanged a meaningful look before the sad-eyed man left, stooping over the victim. Hanna brushed some gravel up on her arm, rolling her eyes up at the female cop that was standing over her. “So? Am I done here, or what? I gave my little statement, and Chris Martin is putting handcuffs on that asshole, and I’m exhausted, Officer – “

“Tamsin.” She introduced herself, sticking her little cop notebook back into her pocket. “And yeah, you’re free to go, but unless you want to subject yourself to a Breathalyzer – and judging by how tipsy I am just by breathing the same air as you, you really don’t – I’d suggest you’d let me give you a ride.”

 

_She kisses like she has somewhere to be – all business, tongue in mouth, getting straight to the point, no nonsense, no flowery shit, and to an extent, that’s how Hanna likes it. She likes her ass against the wall, with Tamsin’s leg insisting itself between hers, pushing her fingertips through Tamsin’s hair as her teeth pulled at her lower lip. It’s all hot and fast and purposeful, not an action unaccounted for, a reaction for every tease._

_But despite her calculated urgency, her rush to get places, to take her places, it always ends up being some long, slow, tantalizing thing where Tamsin plays every inch of her like a musician, and she can feel three or four heartbeats in between every second that ticked by on the clock. The bed explodes with pillowy softness beneath her as she is pushed over and pinned on it, and she grips and twists the sheets as Tamsin’s mouth finds every single one of her weak spots. She smirks at her so wickedly over her hips that Hanna can’t decide whether she wants to slap her or kiss her. But by the time she’s using her tongue for more productive exploits, the urge to hit her is all but gone, replaced with another, less violent agenda._

_Tamsin likes to make her beg for it, make her say her name, or call her ‘officer’ or else she stops and waist, or worse, just leaves her there, aching in frustration. (Once, she’d left her handcuffed to the bed for two hours, that was how serious she got.)But most of the time, with warmth turning to fire in her stomach and chest, and the tremble in her thighs and the tightness in her grip, she’ll do it in a heartbeat. Tamsin has a way of making a world without her impossible, no release unthinkable, and maddeningly, out-of-her mind desirable. Hanna doesn’t know how she manages to do it._

_But she supposes, in the end, as she comes hard around her fingertips, how she does it doesn’t really matter._

 

“How gentlemanly of you, but I think I’ll pass.” Hanna said, sliding her purse over her shoulder, hopping off the back of the ambulance and landing unsteadily in her four inch heels. “I’m fine.” She took one step, caught her heel on a crack in the road, and went down.

“Come on, short stuff.” Tamsin sounded almost amused as she sighed, leaning down and linking arms with Hanna and scooping her off the pavement. “Let’s go.”

“I’m not short!” Hanna snapped, even though, without her heels, she would probably come up to Tamsin’s chin. “You’re just freakishly tall. What are you, half giant?”

“Nah, giants went extinct back around 1200.” Tamsin replied in such a nonchalant way that Hanna couldn’t tell if she was kidding or not. “But seriously, kiddo, tell me your address.”

“Don’t – “

“Address.”

Tamsin meant business. “It’s over on Medina, above the Subway. Always smells like bread, so I’m always fucking hungry.” Hanna bent over to adjust the strap on her heel. (Perhaps she’d been drinking as much as Tamsin assumed she’d been. Whatever.)

“A little thing like you, living in a neighborhood like that?” Hanna shrieked as Tamsin unceremoniously scooped her up into her arms and deposited her in the front seat of the cop car, but she kept on talking as though no interruption had occurred. “You should get a taser or something. I can hook you up.”

“Yeah, sure you can.” An eye roll of momentous proportions. “Just take me home. And no more manhandling, I could sue you.” Hanna glanced over her shoulder as they pulled away from the crime scene. “And what about Chris Martin, huh? Why are you leaving him behind? I’d let him hook me up.”

Now it was Tamsin’s turn to roll her eyes. “We’re officially off shift as of two minutes ago, and I felt like messing with him a little bit.” She shrugged, turning her eyes to the road. All of the streetlights had been punched out, and it was pitch black, and it sounded like it had started to rain. “He’s a big boy, he can handle himself.”

There was a scratching noise against the passenger’s side door, and Hanna leapt away from it. “Shit, what was that?” She yanked the hem of her skirt down out of reflex, instinctually curling toward Tamsin. (After all, she was an armed, badass cop, even if she did have an attitude problem that rivaled Hanna’s.)

“Relax, drunky, you’re just hearing things.” But even in her (slightly, she would later argue) inebriated state, Hanna could tell something had changed. Tamsin’s hands rotated on the wheel, her grip growing white knuckled, her eyes shifting rapidly from side to side. Watching her made Hanna as dizzy as she got when she tried to watch tennis. (Especially that one time, at 3 am, after too much sangria. It hadn’t been fun to clean up the apartment the morning after.)

There was barely any warning between the second scratching noise and the door suddenly being ripped open – no, off, Hanna realized in horror as she was snatched out of the car, watching as whatever the hell it was that had her tossed the white door to the side as carelessly as a Frisbee. She didn’t realize she had screamed until her throat started hurting, and she didn’t realize Tamsin had gotten out of the car until she heard shouting. “Get the fuck away from her!”

_There’s blood on the mirror – wait, that’s lipstick. Hanna rubs her eyes, all the mascara smudged and faded away to nothing against frayed sheets and Tamsin’s neck. The memories are as broken as the bottle in the sink, and the overwhelming scent of vodka clings to all the cheap tile and wallpaper glue. But she does remember leaving behind more than just mascara. (There are three distinct scratches along Tamsin’s hip that will make wearing a belt difficult, she knows that much.)_

_The lipstick globules cluster into letters and then words, and Hanna can’t focus on them long enough to read them for a long moment. Her hand closes around the rim of the sink, chipped and sad like her nail polish as she lurches forward, avoiding the glass on the floor, trying to read beyond the dull pervasiveness of her hangover._

_Got a call._

_Had to leave._

_Didn’t want to wake you._

_-T_

_Anyone else would be pissed, but Hanna’s just glad she spared the second to scrawl a message._

_Even if the bitch did use up her last good lipstick._

 

Hanna couldn’t even see what was holding her, but its chest felt like a brick wall. More than human, way more. “I thought you said giants were extinct!” She shouted, struggling to turn around in the vise like grip. God, she needed to stop drinking tequila. She’d had far too many of these hallucinations for her own good.

“Hanna, stop!” Tamsin snapped, an instant of worry flashing through her features – if Hanna had been the smallest bit more drunk, she wouldn’t have noticed. But her heart pounded in her ears and she could already feel the burning of adrenaline all the way down to her bones, a nuclear meltdown of her senses in the name of potential escape. “Tell him I’m working on the succubus thing, alright? It just got complicated, that’s all. No need to hurt Little Miss Boozy there.”

“Hey!” Hanna snapped, reaching over and grabbing his arm – which was surprisingly furry. Had she not been intoxicated, she would have been terrified, but alcohol always had a tendency to make her stupidly brave, so she dug her nails into his arm suddenly and sharply, causing him to loosen his grip just enough so that she could rotate in his arms and see –

“I told you to stop!” Tamsin’s voice trailed off after the sound of her yelp, but Hanna barely heard her as she took in the red eyes glaring down at her, and a face so hairy that not even the best beard trimmer she knew of could fix it. She wanted to believe it was hallucinations and it very well could have been, but the large, furry hands holding her around the waist like an ice cream cone felt too real to be fake. Watching throwing star after throwing star being tossed into (and once through) his arm pretty much cemented the deal, and she was so transfixed and scared that she didn’t realize she’d slipped from his grip until she’d hit the ground, the concrete scraping against her bare legs.

“He will not wait much longer.” Its voice was otherworldly, and the only explanation Hanna could come up with, with her mind muzzed over by alcohol and fear, was that she’d just almost been kidnapped by Satan. Ignoring the tiny pebbles scraping into her skin, she scrambled to Tamsin’s side, blindly pulling herself up by grabbing onto her jeans, and then her leather jacket, unsteady on her feet. “Finish the job and bring in the succubus or suffer the consequences. You know what they are.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, now get the fuck out of here Chewbacca.” Tamsin sneered, lowering her arm around Hanna’s waist helping her step off the curb. When she’d been poured into the front seat of the cop car finally, Hanna couldn’t find words to speak. She could only stare. Monsters that snatched up girls and did…well, whatever, to them were things she had dismissed to the graveyard of her childhood, and to occasional nightmares when she consumed absinthe. But she was 23 years old and the only thing in her – besides a healthy amount of fear – was just some tequila and salty bar popcorn, and while they might have interacted a little, she knew she had just witnessed something very very real. “You alright?” It sounded like Tamsin had been trying to get her attention for some time now.

“What…the FUCK was that?” Hanna asked finally, the question exploding from a place of rage and fear, of anger at Tamsin for whatever she had done to put her in that position.

Tamsin sighed heavily, closing her eyes for a brief second. “Come on.” She said finally, making a turn. “I think you need another drink.”

“The last thing I need is another drink.” Hanna hissed, wrapping her arms around her bare and frigid shoulders. “What I need is an explanation, and to go home. What the hell kind of cop are you?”

“Not your average one.” Tamsin sighed so softly that Hanna almost didn’t hear her. “And trust me. You want that drink.”

 

_Tamsin drinks too much. Hanna only knows that because she’s the same way. Sometimes when she watches her sleep – not that anyone could ever get her to admit it – she forgets she isn’t looking into a mirror. She comes over at all hours, smelling acrid and intoxicating and hangs low over her, all in her space. Hanna pushes her away. She comes back. Hanna lets her._

_When Tamsin bites, she draws blood, but she spits it out like bubblegum, like she can’t stand the taste. Hanna pretends that the bite is the only thing that stings. She leaves bruises on her hips in the shape of hands, and the dull ache reminds her that she’s always being held. She suppose like she should look or feel like one of those hollow eyed women or widows or anyone who’s trapped or is left with mere illusion. Sometimes Tamsin looks like she could be blown away by the slightest breeze. Hanna pretends that she doesn’t hold her a little bit tighter those nights. (She’s turning into an illusion too.)_

_When she’s sick of seeing her crumbling ceiling and the flickering streetlight outside her window, Hanna follows Tamsin home. Home is a parking lot, not far from the station, and she wraps herself in a threadbare blanket and huddles in the back of her truck with a bottle of booze._

_Hanna leaves before she can see any more._

_The next night, she stares at her ceiling again and gets drunk just by kissing her._

 

The bar – she couldn’t pronounce the name at her level of drunkenness – looked like it should smell musty and be filled with old men with thick accents, reminiscing over the old country. But it smelled like apples and yeasty beer, and there were a couple of hot girls hanging around the bar and a few guys, all with chiseled good looks, leaning over the pool table in a hushed but heated argument. Of course, there were the ones who looked like regulars, that drank too much and stayed too late, but there was enough young and fresh blood in the place to make it seem more than a little suspect. “What is this?”

Tamsin ignored her, leading her up to the bar. “I need a shot of the strongest stuff you got for this one, Trick, your majesty.” She said, and as the short but mostly pleasant looking man gave Tamsin a dirty look, Hanna realized she hadn’t seen him there before. He set the glass he was wiping out down onto the bar, and poured her a shot from a bottle that looked older than her great grandma Marin – and that was saying something.

“She’s human.” Trick as, as Hanna picked up the shot glass warily, glancing up sharply.

“What else could I be?” She asked, watching them exchange a knowing look – something she wasn’t in on, but suspected she was about to be. Recalling the memory of her near-kidnapping and the particular horror of what exactly had snatched her, it occurred to her that maybe, just maybe, that was what else she could be. “Oh shit.” She downed the shot without any more hesitation – Tamsin had been right. She needed it.

“Do you claim her?” Trick asked, as he put the bottle away. Tamsin looked hesitant.

“…yeah, she’s mine. I’ll claim her.” Tamsin finally said, after a long moment.

“Whoa whoa whoa, back up.” Hanna said, slamming the shot glass down so hard that it cracked the bottom. “What does that mean? I don’t even know you, and I don’t need you. You can’t claim me, I don’t belong to anybody.” She hissed out all of the platitudes that had been fed to her over the years, which she only halfheartedly believed – but never more so in that moment. “Least of all to some bitch cop who is holding me against my will.”

Tamsin leaned in close – closer than she was comfortable with, but something stopped her from flinching away. (However, that might have been the fingertips holding her chin in place, turning it to look out at the rest of the bar.) “You see all of these lovely people? Well, unless you want any one of them to suck you dry, charm the pants off of you, steal your luck, your fortune, your beauty, your talent, your essence, or just straight up kill you, you want to be mine.” She let go finally. “Got it?”

Hanna nodded meekly, instantly transported back to a different time and a different place. But she let it slide and as Tamsin backed away, she picked up the broken shot glass and cradled it in her hands, tracing the crack with the tip of her index finger. “Got it.” She took a deep breath, leaning against the bar trying not to let her instinct towards being subdued actually subdue her. “So what the hell is going on here, anyway?”

Tamsin sighed, looking at Hanna in curious but slightly pitying way…almost like she felt sorry. But only for a second. Her expression firmed up and lost the sadness and the regretted anticipation, and she looked back at Trick as he placed a pint in front of her. “Fitzpatrick, you want to take this one?”

 

_It’s normal for Tamsin to come and go, to disappear, to not show up to work. (Technically, Hanna knows she probably shouldn’t be anywhere near the police station, but sometimes Dyson catches her outside the building and lets her sit at Tamsin’s desk for a little while and pretends to do paperwork.) It’s as normal as her showing up at 3 in the morning and leaving before the sun rises, a dazed and spent Hanna in her wake. She’s a tornado, a cloudburst, a thunderstorm, and it only gets worse as time goes on._

_She learns that a week is the threshold soon enough – if a week has gone by, then shit has gone down, and someone needs to know about it. Because exactly eight days after their last encounter, when she’s starting to think that this fae business, and Tamsin herself, are just half-remembered delusions brought on by too much alcohol and maddening loneliness, Tamsin breaks down her door. Literally. The door is in splinters across the dingy floor when she bursts into the room to see what caused the noise. Tamsin’s also on the floor, and she’s heaving and there’s too much blood to be just hers. It’s scarlet and jarring and it’s everywhere, and it looks fake, especially after the shock and the revulsion make Hanna double over and get sick._

_Tamsin’s skin is sticky and slippery all at the same time and Hanna’s hand prints are all over her and the not-so-white walls as she manages to drag her into the bathroom and halfway into the tub. The cold water (the only temperature it ever really is, no matter what knob she turns) is enough, and Tamsin jerks beneath the sharp shards of water, her heaving body rolling over the rest of the tub. The water runs scarlet, and Hanna’s chest grows heavy as she watches her fingerprints and the marks she left washing away to nothing, down the drain._

_Hanna asks. Tamsin doesn’t answer. They don’t fuck that night but Tamsin sleeps in her bed while Hanna watches to make sure she doesn’t disappear again. She’s had enough ghosts in her life to know that this will end anything but well._

 

It wasn’t so much the idea that there was a secret society of almost infinitely powerful, immortal, and magical beings being hidden from human view that bothered her. There was very little about that fact that bothered Hanna at all. She had always known, somewhere deep down inside her, the places she went when she was alone and afraid of it, that there was more to the world and those who lived in it. Really, finding out about the fae through the accidental exposure by Tamsin was mostly just a confirmation of something she was already certain about – there was more, there was better, but she would never be truly part of it.

Nothing about that bothered her, but she was disturbed and a little drunk and still running on the vestiges of panic from when the…umber hulk, they had told her it was called – had tried to squeeze the life out of her on Tamsin’s behalf. It wasn’t until Tamsin closed her hand around her wrist to help her turn the calcified key in the temperamental lock on her front door that she realized how long she’d been standing there, motionless. “Sorry.” She mumbled, dropping down on the couch as soon as she was able, kicking off her heels.

“You could spike a guy in the eye with these pretty good.” Tamsin said, leaning over and picking up one of her shoes. They were black with too many straps that left her feeling thankful they were all elastic in the back. “Guess I shouldn’t be surprised though…you did clock that asshole pretty good. And the umber hulk.” She dropped the shoe back. “Look. Nothing to be sorry about. I know it’s a lot to take in, and you’re still pretty smashed.”

“I’m not…and it’s not.” Hanna shrugged, tugging at the hem of her skirt. “It’s really not when you think about it.” She rolled her eyes up to look at Tamsin, who had lost some of her hard edge over the course of the night. “You know, I’m a really good judge of character. You don’t strike me as a person that’s nice to strangers that she’s only just met.” She licked her parched lips, pushing her hand through her hair, now hanging in limp specters of her original ringlets. “So why me?”

Tamsin worked her fingers into the cuffs of her leather jacket, twisting them as silence settled over them. Finally a one shouldered shrug. “I get what it’s like.” She finally said, keeping her eyes firmly away from Hanna and out the window. “To just be going along like you normally do, and then suddenly being pushed into something you didn’t want, knowing something you didn’t want to know, and completely out of your control.” She finally looked toward her, expression mystifying, caught somewhere between guilt and remorse and anger and fear. Hanna couldn’t bring herself to look away, even as Tamsin grew nearer. “I’ll be damned if I let someone else fall in over their head, if I can help it.”

There was something unspoken there. Some cliché about how Hanna reminded her of herself. But Hanna didn’t have the emotional energy to contemplate it. She had only known Tamsin for several hours, but she had the not-so-sneaking suspicion that when she walked out the door, it wasn’t the last time she’d see her. Not by a long shot. “Is this about…the succubus?” She stumbled over the word. “Or whatever the amber hunk was growling about?”

“Umber hulk.” Tamsin was quick to correct her, but said nothing more.

“Whatever.” Hanna dismissed her. “Do it. I mean…bring her in. Doesn’t sound like you can afford to be all high and mighty and noble about it.”

Tamsin’s laugh was bitter and hard to swallow. Hanna could see her grip flexing and tightening on the hem of her jacket. “I’m not, trust me…and it isn’t that simple.”

“Sure it is.” Hanna said, standing, coming to a fraction of Tamsin’s height without her heels on. “Everything is, when you get down to it. You’re talking to an expert in self-preservation…in the end, you’re all you’re gonna have. And if you can’t protect that…”

“Yeah, well, I don’t subscribe to street ethics.” Tamsin bit out, looking down at her. She looked like an animal that was missing its teeth, something that had once had force and instilled fear, had killed and would again if she ever got the inkling, but had suddenly lost every notion of that part of her identity, and could only produce a cheap imitation.

“You say street.” Hanna found herself inching closer, working Tamsin’s fingertips out of the hem of her jacket, pulling her palm to her chest, running her thumbs along its lines. “I say reality.” She wasn’t drunk anymore, so much as exhausted and intrigued and blown apart from all she had learned. She knew, in the back of her mind, that this would only lead to things she couldn’t handle, things that were out of her control. But when had she ever been in control? She didn’t even know what that felt like, she realized, as she counted the stitches in the seams of Tamsin’s cuff. To know what to expect, to know what she should do. She was always a roll-when-you-hit-the-pavement kind of girl, always brushing broken glass and mistakes from her hair and her hem as she ran, and kept on running, until the next crash, the next dumb thing, the next jump through a window to the pavement below. She never felt the impact – she just rolled and ran and careened around without a clue where she was going or what she was doing. To be still for more than a second, the idea of it, was terrifying.

“Reality’s subjective.” Tamsin’s mouth was rough on hers, but not as much as her hands, cupping her jaw and twisting into her hair and pulling hard. It was all teeth and breathing her air and fingertips and thighs and a cold wall pressed to her still bare back. Tamsin bit hard on her lower lip and Hanna tasted blood, and a hand curled around the back of her thigh, nails biting into her skin. It rushes through her, down to her stomach, a fever, a need she didn’t know she had, a feeling she didn’t know she could have, and her hips jerk forward, arching against Tamsin to soothe the sudden and powerful ache. Hanna felt her hands close into Tamsin’s jacket, latching onto her as she slammed her against another wall, one wrist above her head.

It was dangerous – a fleeting conscious thought, escaping from the spent, burned out part of her consciousness. It was fire and ice and Tamsin’s hands were matches and candles, lighting her up to get high off of her, breathing her in until there was nothing left of her but the buzzing in Tamsin’s head and the lazy smile on her lips. Desperate to be present, to leave something behind, Hanna gripped Tamsin’s waist as she hitched a leg up around her, digging her nails in, leaving behind a mark – evidence that she was real, that she existed beyond whatever sorcery was going in.

The desire was leaden in her stomach, thick and heavy and painful. Hanna wanted her, but she hated it and she hated her and maybe even herself a little bit, for falling into yet another trap, as this would surely prove to be. As the kiss shattered, and Tamsin left her a puddle against the wall, Hanna reached out, lamely, dimly, but said no words, nothing.

“See you around.” She tugged at the collar of her jacket, letting it fall around her shoulders, shooting Hanna a dark look that meant she wasn’t kidding. Her footsteps were solid, her body a black hole, tugging everything into its gravity. And Hanna was nothing to her, she knew that. She was as fragile as a bubble, and Tamsin had every intention of popping her.


End file.
